Torchlight 2 is too big for XBLA

By Fred Dutton Published 4 August, 2011

Runic on classes, co-op, pets and the MMO.

UPDATE: Runic has clarified via its Twitter feed that it's the XBLA memory limit that's the problem, not the file size restriction.

ORIGINAL STORY: Super-sized PC action RPG sequel Torchlight 2 is too big to fit on Xbox Live Arcade and will need to be "comprehensively redesigned" if it's ever to see a console release, developer Runic Games has revealed.

CEO Max Schaefer told Eurogamer that it had only just managed to squeeze the original game below Microsoft's file size limit. As it stands, the significantly more ambitious sequel is not even close.

Whereas the first game had just one just small town and a few dungeons, the sequel has vast outdoor areas, multiple hub cities, different terrain types and, crucially, co-operative multiplayer.

"With Torchlight 2 there is a little more complication as far as just being able to do a straight port, as we did with Torchlight 1," he explained. "In all likelihood, if Torchlight 2 gets to the Xbox it would be probably fairly comprehensively redesigned.

"We would have to be redoing the interface for a console release anyway, just like we did with Torchlight 1, so it would probably make sense to do something more specifically tailored to the Xbox.

"We managed to shoehorn Torchlight 1 in there but just barely," he continued.

"As some people have pointed out, there's a little bit of frame-rate slowdown when it gets super crowded on screen. That's another fact of it not being designed for the system and just being shoehorned onto it."

That said, it still hopes to bring the game to consoles in some form, given the huge success of the original on XBLA.

"Torchlight on Xbox Live did very well for us. I think it's the number one revenue game on XBLA for the year so far. We missed out being the top for units sold to Full House Poker by a little bit but they cost less than we do. It was definitely a profitable and valuable experience and we're happy with the results.

When asked whether he was interested in pursuing a full retail release for consoles rather than sticking to the limiting confines of XBLA, Schaefer replied, "We would absolutely consider that." However, no formal discussions with any prospective publishers have yet been held.

"We're very consciously trying to focus on one thing at a time and at the moment it's getting Torchlight 2 out for the PC. Then the next thing will be the Mac port.

"Beyond that we're keeping our options open, depending on what happens. We have a lot of opportunities to do a lot of different things but we want to stay a small studio. We're 30 people total, so we really like to do one thing at a time and not over-commit and grow the studio more than we would like."

Schaefer was good enough to provide Eurogamer with a few more tidbits of information on the keenly-anticipated follow-up to its acclaimed 2009 dungeon crawler.

First up, the The Railman character class has been renamed The Engineer, "because in re-doing our story 25 times we've actually got rid of rails, so it didn't make sense anymore."

He also added that the game's fourth and final class will be revealed at PAX Prime, later this month.

A player limit for the new co-op mode hasn't been decided on yet, but Schaefer reckons "It'll probably be between four and eight."

However the modding tools will allow you to tinker away with that number to your heart's content.

"You'll be able to break the game by setting it to 1000 or whatever – there's quite a lot of flexibility with the tools. If you really want to put more people in and design a level that fits that many people as a customer you're free to do so."

He declined to offer an update on what new pets we'll see in the finished game, explaining that that will be one of the last aspects of the game to be finished up.

"It's everyone's favourite thing but it's also one of the more trivial aspects of making the game," he said.

"We haven't actually tackled the new pets yet, so I don't even know what we're going to add. But they are a little bit more fully-featured and we'll have really fun, cool pets. Everyone likes the pets, but it is the thing you do at the very end after everything else is working.”

A release date still hasn't been pinned down, but Runic is hoping to have it out this Autumn.

"It's going to be in the Fall. It's definitely, 100 per cent, for sure this year and not the Winter with any luck. It's coming along really well. We've hit our internal July milestones, so we should be on track for a Fall release."

Finally, Schaefer offered a quick update on the status of the planned Torchlight MMO. Sounds like it's a long way off.

"That's obviously still in the plan. But is it the next thing or is it something beyond that? We just don't know. We have a lot of good ideas for the MMO, we just aren't committing to any kind of schedule yet. If Torchlight 2 blows up on PC and it's the biggest thing since sliced bread we'll probably want to give more attention to that before heading into the MMO world."

Picture of Fred.

About Fred Dutton

Fred Dutton is Eurogamer's US news editor, based in Washington DC.

Read more articles from Fred by visiting the Fred Dutton archive page.

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Comments (40) Latest comment 10 months ago

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  • Almostas #1 10 months ago

    will be great game

  • mumblyjoe #2 10 months ago

    This is gonna be awesome! Sucks for xboxxers though :[

  • Gambit1977 #3 10 months ago

    PSN please :)

  • Segaswirl #4 10 months ago

    That's disappointing... loved the original on the Xbox :(

  • Xboxfanuk #5 10 months ago

    why couldn't this be a full retail digitally distributed title on Games on Demand? Does it HAVE to release in box form first?

  • riz23 #6 10 months ago

    Call me a mug, but stick on a disc for a 360 and I'll buy it. So will my mates.

  • Psychotext #7 10 months ago

    I was under the impression the size limit was gone now.

  • Mr_Understanding #8 10 months ago

    I dont understand this.Torchlight was less than a 200mb download on xbox and they are saying it barely fit on xbla.I have seen many arcade games with a download of over 1gb.

    Plz let this be ported to xbox as i loved the original.

  • BBIAJ #9 10 months ago

    The size limit for XBLA is 2GB, so saying that they had to squeeze the first game onto XBLA is absolute bollocks!
    Edited by BBIAJ at 04/08/11 @ 22:48

  • spongebob #10 10 months ago

    Yeah, what on earth is going on exactly? The first one is under 200 megs, which I thought was really surprising in a good way. But that is definitely not close to the XBLA size limit by a long shot.

  • Tryhard #11 10 months ago

    Well it got you an xbox fanbase.So put the bigger better sequel on disk and make it a retail game.Problem solved,and Xbox Torchlight fans chuffed to bits.

  • Gastrian #12 10 months ago

    Post deleted at 17:56:43 13-04-2012

  • darkmorgado #13 10 months ago

    Can't they release it at retail on a budget in a single region and then put it on Games on Demand? Sure MS would agree to publish given the fanbase.

  • Quak #14 10 months ago

    > probably fairly comprehensively

    I've probably possibly definitely never seen a sentence like that before.

  • darkmorgado #15 10 months ago

    @Xboxfanuk

    "why couldn't this be a full retail digitally distributed title on Games on Demand? Does it HAVE to release in box form first? "

    GOD titles have to been released at retail in at least one territory to qualify.

  • jaangus #16 10 months ago

    where is my Diablo III :[

  • Yuroko #17 10 months ago

    This is the perfect game for me on Xbox live. I'm too shit to keep up with the FPS multiplayer games. Would love an MMO lite game like this to play with my friends. Would play it on pc but can't hack sitting at the pc for several hours.

  • Roamer #18 10 months ago

    Since the biggest draw of the sequel is co-operative multiplayer, dropping an Xbox release makes absolutely no sense. Very few people have two controllers or two pairs of keyboard/mouse hooked up to a PC. Oh, and online co-op is a load of old bollocks. Split-screen is where it's at.

  • richardiox #19 10 months ago

    Shit, imagine if a simple 2000mb/200mb typo influenced their whole development process and gave them a whole lot of headaches trying to "squeeze" it under limit.

  • Kremlik Verified Co-Founder, Crash To Desktop #20 10 months ago

    where is my Diablo III :[

    It's THIS - names be dammed, 'Diablo 3' is only Diablo in name (and loose plot) only, Torchlight 2 is not only better then Diablo 3 it's made by the minds behind the original series so in the end T2 is the 'real D3'

  • Kneesrs #21 10 months ago

    Put it under Games on Demand then. I'm okay with same price point as PC version, even if that exceeds 1200 points. I don't need it under XBLA, I just want it on my console.

  • VandelayIndustries #22 10 months ago

    So are they considering PSN now that XBLA is out of the question? As this could work wonderfully as a PS3/Vita cross-play title.

  • metallicorphan #23 10 months ago

    that's annoying i loved the first game on XBLA and have been looking forward to the second...i agree with Kneesrs,just stick it on Games On Demand then,and while you are at it MS you can stick the updated Strangers Wrath on Games on Demand as well

  • kei #24 10 months ago

    The problem is about RAM, not about disk space. So no XBLA/PSN.

  • GamesConnoisseur #25 10 months ago

    PS3 GPU and main rams system is a bit more fussy than unified 512 mb ram on X360, and so if won't fit on X360 then very much ruled out PS3.

    But like others loved the first one and pretty please for both HD consoles! Co op would be very sweet as me and my kids can play together or in turns.

  • Collymilad #26 10 months ago

    They'll find a way.

    It's a RAM problem? Really?

    I'm not an expert in any way but it seems dumb to me that you can fit GTA IV, Oblivion, Fallout, Skyrim etc on it but not torchlight? Eh?

    Where are people getting the RAM thing from?

    "CEO Max Schaefer told Eurogamer that it had only just managed to squeeze the original game below Microsoft's file size limit. As it stands, the significantly more ambitious sequel is not even close"
    Edited by Collymilad at 04/08/11 @ 23:10

  • miiiguel #27 10 months ago

    What?, Lara Croft game is 10x (that's 10 times!) bigger. Anyhow, never understood what's the big fuss about it, Bastion is 20x (twenty times!) better than this. And a bit of a slow down? Slideshow gaming on my Xbox... 7/10, and I'm generous.
    Edited by miiiguel at 04/08/11 @ 23:15

  • Subdominator #28 10 months ago

    nm

    Edited by Subdominator at 04/08/11 @ 23:14

  • Lunatic4ever #29 10 months ago

    now everyone goes like " yeah, buy torchlight! cause diablo 3 fucked it up"

    I tell ya what, it aint gonna happen. diablo 3 is going to sell like mad anyways.

  • WinterSnowblind #30 10 months ago

    Being a ram issue makes a bit more sense. There hasn't been a 250mb cap on XBLA for years, it's hard to believe that the developers wouldn't have known that, especially as it was published by Microsoft.

  • TheDarkFurie #31 10 months ago

    My heart hurts now...

  • Xardan #32 10 months ago

    Yeah, i dont believe that. I am sure there is many ways to get it to run on the Xbox. I mean the game is hardly cutting edge graphics is it?

  • riseer #33 10 months ago

    Tourchlight should had been on Psn as well.Oh well maybe they can add it in a bundle if they port it over to Ps3.

  • yoomazir #34 10 months ago

    "UPDATE: Runic has clarified via its Twitter feed that it's the XBLA memory limit that's the problem, not the file size restriction."

    What does that mean?

  • UncleLou #35 10 months ago

    Torchlight 2 is not only better then Diablo 3

    Dungeon Siege V beats them both.

  • ProfDrMorph #36 10 months ago

    @yoomazir:

    This means that whoever wrote that update didn't get what Runic was saying in that Twitter feed. The problem is the console's RAM not the any file size limits imposed by XBLA. This issue can't be fixed by a retail/Games-on-Demand release.

    I have to guess why they need more than 512MB (or 512MB minus whatever amount is reserved for the Dashboard). Maybe they keep large amounts of data about the game world in the RAM at any time. You have to consider that a game is more than just polygon meshes, textures and a few sound samples. E.g. if they keep track of where every object is in the game world exactly they might use so much RAM that too few space is left for the rest. But that's just a wild guess.

  • Monkey_Puncher #37 10 months ago

    Disk release pleaze!

  • geeza2020 #38 10 months ago

    :'(

  • artibeus #39 10 months ago

    PSN = Negative votes.

  • nbringer #40 10 months ago

    Advice: stick to PCs and you'll be happy.